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09 April 2007

The Chronicle on Partner Hiring

Today on our dog walk, JM mentioned to me that there's another column in The Chronicle of Higher Ed about partner hires, an issue near but not-so-dear to my heart. Note that I said MY heart, and not OUR heart. That's important for part of this discussion later.

Perhaps it goes without saying, but partner and spousal hiring is fraught at best for everyone involved. It's never going to be perfect, and I don't think it should be. But I really doubt if it's going to disappear as an issue in the profession. I want to say at the outset that no department should ever be expected to hire a couple just because they are a couple. The decisions should be made on a case-by-case basis and should probably follow departmental custom. The absence of such a custom is sometimes frustrating for people in the department and for partners.

But the account of partners on which much of such decision making depends can be hugely problematic and can bear very little relation to, well, a whole lot of relationships. Let's take some statements from the column written by the person who calls himself "Joseph Kay." (As for the pseudonym, please tell me a department chair isn't trying to make a Kafka-esque joke. That's just terrible.)

Statement One (this one goes on a bit):

The primary problem with a single department hiring both members of an
academic couple is that the department can't know in advance how the
two will function as a pair. Will they always vote together and voice
the same views during meetings? For the purposes of governance, would
we be hiring two individuals or two individuals acting as one?

Moreover, even if the partners are hired by two different programs (our
department has many programs) so their vote in any one program would be
limited, those two programs' meetings could no longer be considered
confidential once a couple was on board. The opinions expressed in
either program's meetings would potentially become common knowledge in
the second program....The problems created by hiring couples seem real and substantial:
couples voting together on tenure cases and other departmental issues,
sharing information between programs, and diluting or otherwise
altering one another's positions....Can a department head give widely disparate evaluations to both
partners without causing an extra and entirely unneeded morale problem?
One disgruntled member of a couple can persuade the other not to
cooperate with the department, or can dampen the other member's
enthusiasm.

This has to be the most paranoid, conservative account of a couple I've come across, and what is more, this reads more like an account of bad colleagues than of colleagues who are married or partnered to each other. Just because people are in a relationship does not mean they think exactly the same way about everything. In fact, get this: JM and I don't even have exactly the same stance on partner hiring. Couples don't necessarily form voting blocs, nor do they necessarily divulge confidential information. I know quite well some academic couples in my department, one hired under the auspices of our campus's dual career academic couples program, and one that became a couple after being hired separately who--gasp!--observe the bounds of confidentiality within their respective couplehoods (for lack of a better word). There are lots of reasons not to divulge everything from a meeting, reasons such as protecting other colleagues (including a spouse or partner); and also needing to talk about something besides work occasionally. Can't speak for JM, but I'd rather talk about cutting my fingernails than hear about some meeting of his. I'm in enough of my own.

What's more, formation of voting blocs and breaches of confidentiality ought to be considered important issues for everyone. Which is to say I have colleagues who will divulge all manner of confidential information to people they're not even sharing a house with. Huh! And Kay seems to be dramatically overestimating the power of two votes anyway--to really be effective, a voting bloc ought to probably consist of more than two votes. And believe me, I have many colleagues who regularly assemble real voting blocs.

Statement Two:

Love is grand but if you
are a graduate student, don't marry or become attached to someone in
your field. It's a mistake that is going to make your job search much
more difficult than it already will be. It can cost you a job you
really want, and thus put a strain on the marriage/relationship as well
as on the job search.

I mean, come on. This person obviously knows very little about how relationships frequently form. My fingers and toes wouldn't be enough to count the number of people who have met and fallen for each other in the context of work (not just academia, but especially academia). Or, as in my case, met outside of the academic context (in this case hoops), and then had to, as he puts it, "deal with the consequences." As one of our (thankfully) kindhearted deans put it to me when discussing our situation, "People meet each other. Happens all the time."

JK's statement rivals the patronizing statements that JM and I encountered in various places this year, though it's a little more forthright. If I wanted a department head's advice on relationships, I would have asked. Thanks though!

Statement Three:

And there is always the issue of what happens if the couple splits up.
The presence of an embittered former husband and wife, or former
partners, does not make for collegial relations and a happy department.
What effect might two or three such former couples, then, have on a
department?

I offer this statement because I actually think this is one of JK's better points, only not for the reasons he provides. It's often a helpful gauge for a faculty to ask themselves whether the spouse or partner who is being considered would be a welcome addition apart from the relationship he or she is in. As one administrator put it about another couple, "What if they break up and [the person we originally hired] leaves?" Well, that's a darned good question, and it is, I contend, a useful thought experiment when considering two people as a package deal.

What I am not saying is that departments should always accommodate spousal and partner hiring requests. There are some very good reasons not to do so in particular cases. It's just that JK doesn't hit on very many of them. As illustration, I offer you

Statement Four:

Should there be policies for unmarried partners similar to those for
married couples? Does a department owe a candidate's boyfriend or
girlfriend a tenure-track job? A visiting or adjunct position can be
provided if it will make the move easier and the department badly wants
the candidate.

But the probability of a break-up is much higher in the case of an
unmarried couple than in the case of married couples, and so the
department is taking a risk should it offer a tenure-track job to a
member of an unmarried couple.

This statement carries the distinction of being both ridiculous and painfully heterosexist. There are couples who aren't allowed to get married in this country, and others who either choose not to or wouldn't if they could for very good feminist reasons. Furthermore, JK obviously doesn't know how easy it is to get a divorce, and how difficult and painful it is to break up a relationship after several years regardless of whether that couple had a ceremony to celebrate the relationship or (when possible) made it legally binding. And how if a relationship didn't mean that much to someone, that person would most likely not risk their professional reputation and good standing in the department in order to have a spouse or partner considered. What is more, the language of "owing" again sets up all spousal/partner accommodation requests as requests stemming from entitlement. If someone demands a spousal or partner hire without good arguments or leverage in place--and even with good arguments or leverage if the request takes the form of a demand--then that person is probably not a very good colleague to have.

Statement Five:Affirmative-action guidelines should be changed to require a candidate
needing a spousal or partner hire to say so in the application letter
or during the initial interview. It is very poor practice, as some
candidates have done, to take off a wedding ring or to otherwise
mislead the hiring department into thinking that a candidate is single
until the moment an offer is made.

This suggestion is tantamount to asking people to invite discrimination. And it is also ludicrous. A hiring committee can't be expected to anticipate a couple's decision any more than it can anticipate whether someone will take a position at University X over University Y. JM and I went on the market this year knowing that we might end up commuting--even seeing commuting between universities where we each hold tenured or tenure-track positions as perhaps a better alternative to our current jobs. Following JK's advice across the board would mean looking at someone and saying "so, how do you feel about discriminating against someone for their marital status?" And what's more, why take someone
through our logic--logic that it took a few years for us to develop ourselves, and that depends on lots of other choices we've made in our lives, together and separately--before an offer is even extended? Doing so risks seeming rather arrogant, if you ask me.

On the market this year, JM and I each shared information about our situation with some people at some schools and not with others. Some know me well enough to know that I'm married, so I didn't see the point in concealing it. Others I felt would best know what to do with the information because they know the department's customs, and they didn't let me down. At one of JM's schools, though--a place where we would have LOVED to have a second home--somehow knew about me, and on his campus visit one person there asked him a pointed question about me that was at worst painfully awkward and at best just flat-out illegal.

And for the record, JM and I don't even own wedding rings. That
decision may drive my Aunt Carol batty, but it really should be none of
my colleagues' or prospective colleagues' business.

In all, though, Joseph Kay's take on partner hiring is short-sighted, heteronormative, and pretty darned anti-feminist. It seems tacitly based on an outdated model of partner hiring, which is to say spousal hiring, wherein the high-powered man seeks a position for his wife. In fact, I'd say the newer formations--same sex couples, women and men with spouses--is really what's throwing JK for a loop.

This is not to pretend, however, that spousal and partner hiring is easy, nor--I'll repeat it--should it be. But please, if you are JK or have allowed the sort of assumptions about 'academic couples' that form the bulk of his column, please spare us all the advice on love. And for the love of liberty, don't try to rewrite affirmative action laws in the interests of bureaucratic tidiness.

Comments

The Chronicle on Partner Hiring

Today on our dog walk, JM mentioned to me that there's another column in The Chronicle of Higher Ed about partner hires, an issue near but not-so-dear to my heart. Note that I said MY heart, and not OUR heart. That's important for part of this discussion later.

Perhaps it goes without saying, but partner and spousal hiring is fraught at best for everyone involved. It's never going to be perfect, and I don't think it should be. But I really doubt if it's going to disappear as an issue in the profession. I want to say at the outset that no department should ever be expected to hire a couple just because they are a couple. The decisions should be made on a case-by-case basis and should probably follow departmental custom. The absence of such a custom is sometimes frustrating for people in the department and for partners.

But the account of partners on which much of such decision making depends can be hugely problematic and can bear very little relation to, well, a whole lot of relationships. Let's take some statements from the column written by the person who calls himself "Joseph Kay." (As for the pseudonym, please tell me a department chair isn't trying to make a Kafka-esque joke. That's just terrible.)

Statement One (this one goes on a bit):

The primary problem with a single department hiring both members of an
academic couple is that the department can't know in advance how the
two will function as a pair. Will they always vote together and voice
the same views during meetings? For the purposes of governance, would
we be hiring two individuals or two individuals acting as one?

Moreover, even if the partners are hired by two different programs (our
department has many programs) so their vote in any one program would be
limited, those two programs' meetings could no longer be considered
confidential once a couple was on board. The opinions expressed in
either program's meetings would potentially become common knowledge in
the second program....The problems created by hiring couples seem real and substantial:
couples voting together on tenure cases and other departmental issues,
sharing information between programs, and diluting or otherwise
altering one another's positions....Can a department head give widely disparate evaluations to both
partners without causing an extra and entirely unneeded morale problem?
One disgruntled member of a couple can persuade the other not to
cooperate with the department, or can dampen the other member's
enthusiasm.

This has to be the most paranoid, conservative account of a couple I've come across, and what is more, this reads more like an account of bad colleagues than of colleagues who are married or partnered to each other. Just because people are in a relationship does not mean they think exactly the same way about everything. In fact, get this: JM and I don't even have exactly the same stance on partner hiring. Couples don't necessarily form voting blocs, nor do they necessarily divulge confidential information. I know quite well some academic couples in my department, one hired under the auspices of our campus's dual career academic couples program, and one that became a couple after being hired separately who--gasp!--observe the bounds of confidentiality within their respective couplehoods (for lack of a better word). There are lots of reasons not to divulge everything from a meeting, reasons such as protecting other colleagues (including a spouse or partner); and also needing to talk about something besides work occasionally. Can't speak for JM, but I'd rather talk about cutting my fingernails than hear about some meeting of his. I'm in enough of my own.

What's more, formation of voting blocs and breaches of confidentiality ought to be considered important issues for everyone. Which is to say I have colleagues who will divulge all manner of confidential information to people they're not even sharing a house with. Huh! And Kay seems to be dramatically overestimating the power of two votes anyway--to really be effective, a voting bloc ought to probably consist of more than two votes. And believe me, I have many colleagues who regularly assemble real voting blocs.

Statement Two:

Love is grand but if you
are a graduate student, don't marry or become attached to someone in
your field. It's a mistake that is going to make your job search much
more difficult than it already will be. It can cost you a job you
really want, and thus put a strain on the marriage/relationship as well
as on the job search.

I mean, come on. This person obviously knows very little about how relationships frequently form. My fingers and toes wouldn't be enough to count the number of people who have met and fallen for each other in the context of work (not just academia, but especially academia). Or, as in my case, met outside of the academic context (in this case hoops), and then had to, as he puts it, "deal with the consequences." As one of our (thankfully) kindhearted deans put it to me when discussing our situation, "People meet each other. Happens all the time."

JK's statement rivals the patronizing statements that JM and I encountered in various places this year, though it's a little more forthright. If I wanted a department head's advice on relationships, I would have asked. Thanks though!

Statement Three:

And there is always the issue of what happens if the couple splits up.
The presence of an embittered former husband and wife, or former
partners, does not make for collegial relations and a happy department.
What effect might two or three such former couples, then, have on a
department?

I offer this statement because I actually think this is one of JK's better points, only not for the reasons he provides. It's often a helpful gauge for a faculty to ask themselves whether the spouse or partner who is being considered would be a welcome addition apart from the relationship he or she is in. As one administrator put it about another couple, "What if they break up and [the person we originally hired] leaves?" Well, that's a darned good question, and it is, I contend, a useful thought experiment when considering two people as a package deal.

What I am not saying is that departments should always accommodate spousal and partner hiring requests. There are some very good reasons not to do so in particular cases. It's just that JK doesn't hit on very many of them. As illustration, I offer you

Statement Four:

Should there be policies for unmarried partners similar to those for
married couples? Does a department owe a candidate's boyfriend or
girlfriend a tenure-track job? A visiting or adjunct position can be
provided if it will make the move easier and the department badly wants
the candidate.

But the probability of a break-up is much higher in the case of an
unmarried couple than in the case of married couples, and so the
department is taking a risk should it offer a tenure-track job to a
member of an unmarried couple.

This statement carries the distinction of being both ridiculous and painfully heterosexist. There are couples who aren't allowed to get married in this country, and others who either choose not to or wouldn't if they could for very good feminist reasons. Furthermore, JK obviously doesn't know how easy it is to get a divorce, and how difficult and painful it is to break up a relationship after several years regardless of whether that couple had a ceremony to celebrate the relationship or (when possible) made it legally binding. And how if a relationship didn't mean that much to someone, that person would most likely not risk their professional reputation and good standing in the department in order to have a spouse or partner considered. What is more, the language of "owing" again sets up all spousal/partner accommodation requests as requests stemming from entitlement. If someone demands a spousal or partner hire without good arguments or leverage in place--and even with good arguments or leverage if the request takes the form of a demand--then that person is probably not a very good colleague to have.

Statement Five:Affirmative-action guidelines should be changed to require a candidate
needing a spousal or partner hire to say so in the application letter
or during the initial interview. It is very poor practice, as some
candidates have done, to take off a wedding ring or to otherwise
mislead the hiring department into thinking that a candidate is single
until the moment an offer is made.

This suggestion is tantamount to asking people to invite discrimination. And it is also ludicrous. A hiring committee can't be expected to anticipate a couple's decision any more than it can anticipate whether someone will take a position at University X over University Y. JM and I went on the market this year knowing that we might end up commuting--even seeing commuting between universities where we each hold tenured or tenure-track positions as perhaps a better alternative to our current jobs. Following JK's advice across the board would mean looking at someone and saying "so, how do you feel about discriminating against someone for their marital status?" And what's more, why take someone
through our logic--logic that it took a few years for us to develop ourselves, and that depends on lots of other choices we've made in our lives, together and separately--before an offer is even extended? Doing so risks seeming rather arrogant, if you ask me.

On the market this year, JM and I each shared information about our situation with some people at some schools and not with others. Some know me well enough to know that I'm married, so I didn't see the point in concealing it. Others I felt would best know what to do with the information because they know the department's customs, and they didn't let me down. At one of JM's schools, though--a place where we would have LOVED to have a second home--somehow knew about me, and on his campus visit one person there asked him a pointed question about me that was at worst painfully awkward and at best just flat-out illegal.

And for the record, JM and I don't even own wedding rings. That
decision may drive my Aunt Carol batty, but it really should be none of
my colleagues' or prospective colleagues' business.

In all, though, Joseph Kay's take on partner hiring is short-sighted, heteronormative, and pretty darned anti-feminist. It seems tacitly based on an outdated model of partner hiring, which is to say spousal hiring, wherein the high-powered man seeks a position for his wife. In fact, I'd say the newer formations--same sex couples, women and men with spouses--is really what's throwing JK for a loop.

This is not to pretend, however, that spousal and partner hiring is easy, nor--I'll repeat it--should it be. But please, if you are JK or have allowed the sort of assumptions about 'academic couples' that form the bulk of his column, please spare us all the advice on love. And for the love of liberty, don't try to rewrite affirmative action laws in the interests of bureaucratic tidiness.